How many times can you do the same stupid thing? Not you. I refer to myself.

Quite a few, it turns out. Let’s take that old favorite: You let your car run out of gas.

Truth is, I’ve only run out once. But the times I almost ran out I can’t count on two hands.

Most have occurred on country back roads. I’m driving along, entranced by meadowlarks, and gaze down at the gauge. Almost empty. That’s when the stress needle jumps. At this time of year, I think back to the one time my needle went clean off the chart.

It began with the tell-tale cough of six strangling cylinders. Then the lurch of a pickup truck desperate for fuel. Then silence – a pervasive silence bred of isolation from humans and pure Pennsylvania wilderness.

A turkey vulture soared overhead, its shadow faster than the wind over endless, budding treetops. Last year’s leaves scuttled across a narrow rock road. Then the wind sucked them up into whirling tornado-like swirls.

More pervasive silence.

Actually, I wasn’t out of gas, just dangerously close. Aided by a curse, a prayer and some heartfelt body English, the truck started up again and resumed its creeping ascent of an Allegheny Mountain peak that was long on natural splendor and lacking in modern convenience.

Mountain laurels locked arms in a tangle of pinkish white blossoms. Shadbush, witch hobble and wood anemone flowered everywhere. Thriving on different levels of the forest’s multi-story hotel, they combined to splash its yellow-green interior with flecks of springtime white.

The least flycatcher’s cheery che-bek, the white-throated sparrow’s plaintive wilderness song – all were there, ready to provide a nature buff with stimuli for endless reveries.

A nature buff, that is, whose gauge read “FULL.”

For this buff, thoughts of the forest primeval quickly dissolved into prayers for an industrial highway around the next bend. What those prayers produced was just trees and more trees, cellulose cities ruled by regal white pines, toothpick straight reaching up to the sky.

But wait. Up ahead. Oh, sweet savior of gasoline dingbats. It’s a house, a house with a sign – “Pennsylvania Dept. of Forest Resources: Pump Station No. 5.”

Pulling up the driveway, I discovered two servants of the Keystone State basking in afternoon sun. One brandished a chain saw, the other a prodigious pot belly. Lurking in the shadows stood a rusty, but functional gas pump.

Space limitations preclude a detailed description of how I groveled. Suffice it to say the two noble foresters generously pumped five gallons into the tank for the price of a little small talk.

“Yep, this is wild country up here,” said the man with the saw. “We’ve got bears, we’ve got turkeys …”

“And rattlesnakes,” interjected his partner.

The porcine one adjusted a perspiring “Diesel Power” baseball cap and began paring his nails with a pocket knife.

“Best time to see ‘em is on a hot day with a hazy sky,” he said. “That’s when it seems they’re all over.”

I thanked the gentlemen profusely and moseyed along with prudent speed. Fifteen miles down the road was a cold beer, a river with rising trout and a gas station. First the gas, however; then the trout and the beer.